advantageous

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French avantageux (“profitable, beneficial, favourable”),^[2][3][4] recorded in French from 1418,^[2] from avantage, the source of advantage, and the suffix -eux, English -ous.^[2][3] Etymonline and the Shorter Oxford instead treat it as formed in English from advantage and -ous on the model of the French word.^[5][6] The OED compares Spanish avantajoso and Italian avvantaggioso.^[2] The French noun is from avant (“before”),^[5][2] from Latin abante (“from before”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Giving an advantage; profitable, favourable: about 1485, in Gilbert Hay's Buke of the Law of Armys, a manuscript of 1456.^[2] Merriam-Webster gives 1550 as the first known use,^[3] and Etymonline and Dictionary.com date the word to the 1590s.^[5][7]

Semantic evolution

The construction with to or for, naming who gains the advantage, is recorded from 1591.^[2] From 1590 the word could also mean, usually disparagingly, "taking advantage; exploitative, unfair", a sense the OED notes as later chiefly Caribbean.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as "of advantage; profitable; useful; opportune; convenient".^[8] The adverb and the noun in -ness are recorded from the early 17th century.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1485 – giving advantage; profitable, favourable.^[2]
• 1590 – taking advantage; exploitative, unfair.^[2]
• 1591 – with to or for, of the one who benefits.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Giving an advantage; favourable or beneficial: The new lease was advantageous to both tenants.^[3][9][2]
2. (Caribbean, chiefly disparaging) Taking unfair advantage; exploitative.^[2]

Word family

• advantageously
• advantageousness
• nonadvantageous
• unadvantageous

Related words

• advantage
• vantage
• advance
• disadvantageous

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
9. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins